Doug Coutts’ TV Preview: Keeping Up With the Kaimanawas

With a name like Keeping Up With The Kaimanawas, it’s looking likely that this is another reality series.

This time though, there’s less botox and more boot hooks as three young women from Northland head to Waiouru for to rescue a whole bunch of wild horses.

Some of the horses are destined for the knackery while some will end up as farm hacks or pets.

For a select few fame beckons in the shape of a competition to find the bestest stallion – Equines Factor anyone? – and that’s what the three Wilson sisters, horse lovers since before they could even walk gosh darn, are aiming for. And there’s the plot.

The execution ain’t the best though. The producers have decided to do without a narrator trained in the art of narration, or someone able to write it, and the attempts to introduce a touch of jeopardy – the staple element of all reality television – are often a little clumsy. It helps to have some of your actual peril to begin with, rather than manufacture it. (Tell that to Piha Rescue.)

What could have been an interesting one-off – a Country Calendar even – has been spun out into an entire series and the lack of material shows. Still, if you like horses and don’t mind watching repeated shots of them as you attempt to work out what’s just been said, Keeping Up With the Kaimanawas is the show for you.

Doug Coutts has had a career in and around television for close to 40 years. He spent 13 years as a floor manager at Avalon Studios before going freelance and never earning as much again. His writing has spanned TV genres — from Shortland Street dialoguery and quiz shows to documentaries and comedy — while a lengthy stint as TV reviewer in the Auckland Star earned him two mentions in Metro magazine’s Hot List and an angry letter from Jon Gadsby. You can read more of Doug (the satirist) at: Weakly Whirled News.